The Ultimate Fraps Guide

What is Fraps?

Fraps derived from Frames per second is a benchmarking, screen capture, and real-time video capture utility for DirectX and OpenGL applications. It is commonly used to determine a computer's performance with a game, as well as record gaming footage. The program is very popular in the making of amateur machinima films.

The visually lossless Fraps codec allows decoding of Fraps-encoded videos or transcoding to other video formats. The Fraps video codec manages to capture videos with minimal impact on game performance, as it has been optimized to achieve compression higher than uncompressed RGB, resulting in smaller filesizes, though the visually lossless format is considerably less space-efficient than more heavily compressed lossy video formats such as DivX. This is because encoding on-the-fly to a high-compression format such as DivX would have a large negative impact on game performance and only a very fast hard drive could record the immense amount of data produced in using uncompressed video. The Fraps format is a compromise of the two.

The freeware version of Fraps is identical to the registered version of Fraps but places an unremovable Fraps watermark at the top of every video, and each recorded video is limited to 30 seconds in length. Screenshots are not watermarked in the free version but can only be taken in the BMP format.

Fraps can be used to record video at resolutions up to 2560x1600 in size. Custom recording speeds can be specified anywhere from 10 fps up to 100 fps, although at higher resolutions a reduced frame rate should be used to ensure the video can be played back in realtime. While the game is being recorded the frame rate of the game will be limited to the speed of the movie. Fraps is designed to be able to record video at HD resolutions on modern computers, including 720p (1280x720 @ 60 fps) and 1080p (1920x1080 @ 30 fps).

Fraps can take screenshots in various formats: BMP, TGA, JPEG, and PNG.

In order for Fraps to take pictures or capture videos onto their system, users must first be using a program that uses DirectX or OpenGL as a core runtime system. Programs that run in Windows without DirectX or OpenGL are not supported, and therefore Fraps cannot capture desktop applications under Windows 2000 and XP. In Windows Vista the Aero desktop runs through DirectX and can be captured by Fraps.

Unless disabled by the user, Fraps displays a frame/s count in the corner of the screen while it is active. This number display does not show up in the recorded video (but for videos captured while fraps is running, a yellow number display showing the framerate of the video reappears when the video is paused in certain video players, such as windows media player classic), and shows as yellow when not recording and red when recording. It also flashes to black text-on-white background for screen captures for the single frame that was captured. Fraps runs in the background, recording is activated by a user-defined key combination, and can be similarly interrupted. The frame/s count can be disabled within the control panel or be used with a keyboard shortcut.

Starting from version 2.9.0, Fraps supports DirectX 10, and generally is significantly more compatible with Windows Vista than previous versions.

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What do the options do after installing?

Selecting "Start Fraps minimized" will hide the Fraps dialog screen when you launch the program. Fraps can still be accessed through the icon in the system tray.
Selecting "Fraps window always on top" will ensure the program window remains visible even when switching to another application. This option has no effect if Fraps has been minimized to the system tray.
If you'd like Fraps to be loaded when you turn on your machine enable the "Run Fraps when Windows starts" option.
Fraps also supports separate LCD screens on keyboards such as the Logitech® G15™. If you have a supported keyboard you will see the option to "Display status on keyboard LCD". Enabling this option will allow you to see FPS graphs and other identifiers on the keyboard while playing your games. If you have a G15 but do not see this option then you may need to install the latest G15 drivers available from Logitech's website.

Does Fraps have a performance impact on the game?

There is a small overhead associated with drawing the framerate on screen. This may vary depending on your system configuration, but should remain relatively minimal. The best way to measure it on your own system is to find a game that allows you to benchmark it and compare the results obtained with and without Fraps loaded.
When you are benchmarking the overlay is automatically disabled to provide the most accurate results.
If you are recording a movie with Fraps there can be a noticable impact on the game. This is due to all the extra work involved in saving the screen data to disk.

What option does what function?

The Overlay Display Hotkey lets you assign a button that will toggle the frame rate counter between the four corners and off. To change the Hotkey, click in the box and type a new key to be assigned this function. Clicking Disable will stop the Hotkey from having any effect.
The Benchmarking Hotkey lets you assign a button that can be used to determine the average frame rate between any two points in a game. To change the Hotkey, click in the box and type a new key to be assigned this function. Clicking Disable will stop the Hotkey from having any effect.
The overlay corner indicates the region of the screen that the framerate counter will be displayed in. Choose a corner that doesn't obstruct important information in the game's display. If you select Disabled the frame rate counter will not be displayed on screen.
Selecting "Only update overlay once a second" will only change the frame rate counter once a second.
Selecting "Save frame rate to file each second" will output the frame rate once a second to the file FRAPSSEC.TXT in your Fraps directory. This option is deprecated and has been removed in Fraps 2.7.0. Use the detailed FPS statistics option to get individual CSV files for each benchmark run.
The "Stop benchmark automatically" option allows you to specify a fixed duration for the benchmark. Once the number of seconds has elapsed the benchmark will automatically stop and the results will be written to disk.
Finally, detailed benchmark statistics can also be saved to disk. These are written in standard CSV files that can be imported directly into a spreadsheet. All files are automatically named/timestamped and saved in the benchmarks subdirectory. Currently there are 3 files written for each benchmark when this option is enabled:
• FPS - Contains the frame rate value for each second of the benchmark
• frametimes - Contains the time (in milliseconds) of every frame that was rendered in the benchmark
• minmaxavg - Contains the total frame count, benchmark duration, minimum, maximum, and average frame rate values.

How can I average the framerate between two points?

While in the game press the key you assigned to the Benchmarking Hotkey. This will mark the start of where averaging is to take place. A green box is displayed to let you know that logging has begun, and then the counter is removed for maximum accuracy. When you want to end the benchmark, press the Hotkey again. The average framerate will now be displayed in a red box. Full details are also saved in the file FRAPSLOG.TXT in your Fraps folder, and into the benchmark directory if you have detailed statistics enabled.

What is the maximum framerate Fraps will show?

Fraps will show a maximum framerate of 9999 fps on screen. If you need to know precise framerates above this you must use benchmarking and find out the value from FRAPSLOG.TXT, or from the detailed statistics (if you have this option enabled).

Why doesn’t Fraps show above 30fps, 60fps, 75 fps (or any other framerate) in my game?
This can be due to several reasons.
Many games have internal limits that prevent them rendering faster than a certain framerate. In some cases this can mean they are locked at a maximum framerate of only 30fps.
Another possibility is that you have Vsync enabled. Vsync is used to synchronise the output of your graphics card with the display of your monitor. When your graphics card has finished rendering the next frame it waits for the monitor to finish displaying the current one before switching to the new one. This means that the maximum framerate you can obtain will be equal to the refresh rate of your monitor (which is usually 60hz, 75hz, 85hz, or 100hz).
If you disable Vsync then your graphics card will continuously render without waiting for the last frame to be displayed in its entirety. With fast graphics cards this means that your monitor may switch to a new frame halfway down the screen. This effect is known as tearing as there appears to be a visible line separating two different halves. Due to this, you should generally leave Vsync enabled except when benchmarking.

Configuring folder to save screenshots

You can select the folder where Fraps will store all screenshots in. By default this folder is the same as the directory you installed Fraps into, but you can customise it to save anywhere on your disk. Click the Change button to select a new folder, or the View button to show the current contents of the folder.
The Screen Capture Hotkey lets you assign a button that will take a screenshot of the game screen. To change the Hotkey, click in the box and type a new key to be assigned this function. Clicking Disable will stop the Hotkey from having any effect.
Screenshots can be saved in Windows Bitmap (BMP), JPEG (JPG), Portable Network Graphics (PNG), or Targa (TGA) format.
Selecting "Include frame rate overlay on screenshots" will include the Fraps frame rate counter on your screenshots. If the frame rate overlay is disabled, no counter will be saved on your screenshots.

What is the maximum resolution supported by the screen capture?

Screenshots can be taken in games running at resolutions up to 2560x1600.

Configuring folder to save videos

You can select the folder where Fraps will store all movies in. By default this folder is the same as the directory you installed Fraps into, but you can customise it to save anywhere on your disk. Click the Change button to select a new folder, or the View button to show the current contents of the folder.
The Video Capture Hotkey lets you assign a button that will record movies of the game. To change the Hotkey, click in the box and type a new key to be assigned this function. Clicking Disable will stop the Hotkey from having any effect.
Choosing Half-size will store the movie at half the resolution of the game screen. Full-size will store the movie at the same resolution as the game screen.
You can choose the frame rate of the output movie from 25fps, 30fps, 50fps, 60fps, or a custom value up to 100fps. Higher values result in smoother playback but will increase the file size. Some video editing programs will treat movies recorded at 25fps as PAL, and those captured at 29.97/30fps as NTSC.
Selecting "Record Sound" will save the game audio along with the video. You can disable this option if you are planning to add your own sound to the video.
When you select "Detect best sound input" Fraps will determine the best input to record the game sound on. If you choose "Use Windows input" the default Windows recording input will be used. The Windows input may not capture all of the game sounds, so you should generally let Fraps detect the input unless you want to capture sound from an external source.

How do I record a movie while running a game?

First select the target framerate for the movie, which indicates how many frames will be included in the movie each second. You can currently choose from 25, 30, 50 or 60 fps.
In the game press the Video Capture Hotkey (F9) when you want to start recording. While recording the frame rate counter will turn red. When you want to end your movie, press the button again to stop recording. You will now find the movie saved in your default folder.

What is the maximum resolution supported by Half/Full-size video capture?

The maximum resolution for full-size and half-size capture is currently 2560x1600.

Why is the AVI movie generated by Fraps so big? How can I reduce the size?

The filesize is big because there isn’t enough time to encode the movie while the game is running. The movie frames are slightly compressed, but still require a large amount of disk space due to the high resolutions. Once you have finished capturing you should convert the saved AVI into one of the popular compressed movie formats such as mpeg or divx or Any other format that you like.

How do I stop the frame rate counter being saved on my movies?

The frame rate counter shouldn't be saved on your movies. What you may be seeing is Fraps showing the frame rate of your media player. Try exiting Fraps before playing your videos and you should see clean images. If this doesn't help you can disable the frame rate counter before recording by pressing the Overlay Display hotkey.

When I view the movie I saved the video skips and the sound crackles. What's wrong?

Your media player may be having trouble keeping up with the large amount of data Fraps has written to disk. Fraps is optimised for processing large amounts of data, but many players are not. If they can't read the data fast enough skips in the video and audio may be present.
Keep in mind the raw data saved to disk should be fine. If you encode the video into a compressed format you will likely end up with a video file that plays perfectly due to the greatly reduced file size.
You can also lower the movie frame rate or use a lower resolution to reduce the data saved to the hard disk.

How can I adjust the volume of the sound that is recorded?

You must configure the volume through the "Sounds and Audio Devices" item in the Control Panel. Use the following steps:
• Click on the Control Panel and select Sounds And Audio.
• Click on the Audio tab.
• Find the Sound Recording device and click Volume.
• Adjust the volume for the Input that Fraps is recording from. This is usually named "What U Hear", "Record Master", or "Stereo Mixer".
If you can't see the correct Input on screen you may need to enable it by clicking on Properties in the menu and ensuring all Inputs have a check beside their name.

Where can I find the custom Fraps FPS1 codec?

The Fraps codec (FPS1) is put on the system when you install Fraps. If you've reinstalled Windows you will also need to reinstall Fraps in order to play back your movies.
Please keep in mind that if you want to give your raw footage to another person they will also need to have Fraps installed.

What sort of sound files does Fraps record when it records mic and computer, is it .wav or .mp3 or something else?

FRAPs is a nice too that can help to find the right fps you are getting on your system along with benchmarking support. The tool is very easy to use and provides you customization options to change or to manage the location of screenshot you want to store. FRAPs still is a very nice tool that can be used for various purpose. The most common or recommended frame rate that you must get in your system is 25. Yes that is quiet enough while you are working. The fps also matter on the amount of resolution you use.

Whenever you are using this tool to capture screen there are something you must remember. First if you are trying to capture something on half resolution then more system resource is used in comparision to full resolution. To get a high quality video output you need better hardware. Like a good amount of ram, a gpu and nice cpu to handle the processing. I always recommend to use this tool in full resolution. This is easy and fast.